Dual boot quieries

Patricide

Ok my friend bought in his apple ibook today and he was showing me the dual boot on it and i must say that after using it that its the handyst idea ever.

Ive often wanted to use many mac exclusive programs such as garage band etc but never thought of a way to do it untill now.

Anyway im getting a shiney new laptop before i head of to college in october and i was wondering if it was possible to dual boot mac os X on a regular laptop like its possible to dual boot xp on the mac. Also what is the downside to dual booting? Cheers thanks.

Sad Professor

Well for a start I assume your talking about Bootcamp, in which case it was a Macbook that your friend had. The iBook (the old name for the macbook) couldn't run Windows. But to answer your question, no, you can only run Mac OS X on a mac. Why not get a macbook instead?

Creamy Goodness

only downside to dual booting is you have to have a dedicated partition to windows, i always have trouble picking how much space to give partition when i'm setting up dual boot systems of any kind.

i'm sure there are ways of running mac OSX on a regular laptop but it would be illegal more than likely be slow and not worth it in the long run. the main reason why programs like garageband run so well is because it's seriously optimised for mac hardware.

Patricide

Darnst, would get a macbook but on the gaming and practical side of things they get the thumbs down in my book.

440Hz

Patricide wrote:

Darnst, would get a macbook but on the gaming and practical side of things they get the thumbs down in my book.

/sits back to observe ensuing onslaught! popcorn anyone?



ohhhh errrr I mean "moderate" ensuing onslaught of course! /puts popcorn away

SouperComputer

Cremo wrote:

only downside to dual booting is you have to have a dedicated partition to windows, i always have trouble picking how much space to give partition when i'm setting up dual boot systems of any kind.

i'm sure there are ways of running mac OSX on a regular laptop but it would be illegal more than likely be slow and not worth it in the long run. .

It's in no way slow, but yes it is unsupported, illegal and against the EULA.

Cremo wrote:

the main reason why programs like garageband run so well is because it's seriously optimised for mac hardware

Mac hardware is no longer different, bar using EFI in place of BIOS. The code has been optimised for both PPC and Intel-based architectures, but there are no intel-mac-hardware specific changes for Intel-based macs.

Creamy Goodness

Patricide wrote:

Darnst, would get a macbook but on the gaming and practical side of things they get the thumbs down in my book.

tbh i have a gaming laptop atm (acer ferrari) and i played games on it, but soon got bored, just didn't give the full experience of gaming.

macbooks have a good enough card in them tbh to play the likes of cs1.6 quake3 and UT that's good enough for me tbh as they are the games mostly played at college lans if i ever decide to go to them.

gaming laptops are very expensive, depreciate much worse than regular laptops, run extremely hot and are a bitch to lug around, i found it hard carrying a 3kg 15.4inch laptop to college everyday with books and folders as well. another reason why i'm opting for the macbook.

it will allow me to do all my work like programming, web browsing, office utils, video, audio and casual gaming playing the games i mentioned above.

what do you find impractial about a macbook? perhaps a macbook pro could be up your alley they have better graphics cards aswell as a host of other upgrades.

SouperComputer wrote:

It's in no way slow, but yes it is unsupported, illegal and against the EULA.

as i haven't ran OS X on a PC i have no way of saying whether it was slow or not, i was just speculating, which i probably shouldn't of have done.

SouperComputer wrote:

Mac hardware is no longer different, bar using EFI in place of BIOS. The code has been optimised for both PPC and Intel-based architectures, but there are no intel-mac-hardware specific changes for Intel-based macs.

sorry that came out wrong, what i meant to put across is that with mac's the hardware is more standardised like every macbook has more or less the exact same components bar bigger hard drive space etc whereas with PC's there are hundreds of different types of hardware like say for example a graphics card you could have 4-5 manufacturers making the same graphics cards and all of them will be different.

Patricide

Yea i was just looking at the mac book pro's there alright about 500 euro out of my range(but i could save , Hmmmm) One thing that bothers me is the gfx card is only 124 ram on it, its an nvidia 8 series though so i know its gotta be somewhat good to run dx10 but i cant find any benchmarks on the card.

Not looking for a solely gaming laptop here, il be using it for college, gaming, photoshopping, mabey some 3d modelling, movie editing, and music recording so it has to be somewhat powerfull (the way i see it college is an excuse to get some cash tword a good laptop).

O and before the onslaught comes i just think its impractical to me cause ive used windows for most of my life, i know my way round a mac but i know my way blindfolded through a computer(mostly)

440Hz

Patricide wrote:

i know my way round a mac but i know my way blindfolded through a computer(mostly)

Uhmmm! Isn't a Mac a computer also?

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

hehe, sorry, couldn't resist! and before anyone says it... I know I know... Macs never die!!

Creamy Goodness

dunno if you know but there's an educational discount available on the mac site, you get about ~10% off mac's

440Hz

ps: sorry Patricide! I'm only having a laugh, couldn't be that mean to a fellow Tralee-head afterall!!

Agree with Cremo, checkout the student discount. One other thing to consider though is the software, if you are looking at audio/graphics/modelling software you will most likely be looking for very specific applications, which you will have to buy! Just remember to factor in the additional costs!

Patricide

Its all good 440hrz, going ot here but dont you live in limerick whats up with the traleeness(dont you know its a ****hole)

jtsuited

Patricide wrote:

photoshopping, mabey some 3d modelling, movie editing, and music recording so it has to be somewhat powerfull

All of which are done infinitely better on a mac!! Hence the reason that mac is industry standard in these areas.

440Hz

Patricide wrote:

Its all good 440hrz, going ot here but dont you live in limerick whats up with the traleeness(dont you know its a ****hole)

hehe! yeah I know all too well what Tralee is like (I'm from Tralee) (and Steve before you add a bit about Cork - shush). Anyway... not living in Limerick anymore (presume you guessing that from the UL mod thing), im in Galway now (just haven't passed on the modship yet! And there ends Katie's life history :P

Yakult

Well patricide, glad I made you realise the greatness of Mac!

As said above I will be able to play Cs:1.6 but not source! But how bad!
and as said above Mac are the pioneers of music editing, Movie editing etc. Powerfull beasts! lol!